GESTÃO DE ÁREAS PROTEGIDAS E AVALIAÇÃO DA EDUCAÇÃO AMBIENTAL NO ECOTURISMO: ESTUDO DE CASO COM O PROJETO TRILHA SUBAQUÁTICA – EDUCAÇÃO AMBIENTAL NOS ECOSSISTEMAS MARINHOS – NO PARQUE ESTADUAL DA ILHA ANCHIETA, UBATUBA, SÃO PAULO, BRASIL

Abstract

The protected areas management faces a varied series of problems that oscillates since the land regularization up to the inefficiency of its programs of public use. The Environmental Education (EE) is a predictable and desirable legal action which is developed in all the Conservation Units (CU), not only in the Brazillian territory but also around the planet. The Evaluation of the Environmental Education in Brazil (EEEB) in the sea does not exist, mainly associated with the Ecotourism in CU’s. The actual paper presents a qualitative Case Study (CS) of the EEEB in a CU with a weakening zone: Anchieta Island State Park, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The CS deals with Submarine Trail Project – Environmental Education in the Marine Ecosystems (Sub Trail) of the University of São Paulo. The Sub Trail develops nowadays four types of Marine and Coastal Environmental Education (MCEE). The concepts about the environmental importance of the sea and its impacts have been analysed, such as what the ecotourists have learned in the activities of SubTrail in January 2008. The information has been obtained through interviews with semi structured route. 106 participants of the Sub Trail had been interviewed: 50.9% men and 49.1% women from different ages and school degree, so 18 project trainees and 88 visitors on the island. The number of activities performed by the interviewed people just in the Sub Trail reached to 182. The analyses of the interviews have showed that the able trainees and the ecotourists have properly learned the principal concepts of the activities. The Sub Trail have been adequately qualifying, in terms of basic concepts, its trainees through their sensibilization and the transference of fundamental concepts to the marine ecotourists to the PEIA. Its activities can be improved, having in mind to overcome the conceptual and sensibilization transference phase to look for the citizen emancipation, accomplishing the non targeted part of its conceptual quality indicators derived from the National Program of Environmental Education. The Sub Trail where it is and how it is done, qualifies itself already as a successful experience in the context of the Marine Environmental Education in Brazil. Key words: Evaluation. Environmental Education. Conservation Units. Trail. Ecotourism. Marine Ecosystems.